


keepsakes

by asterismal (asterisms)



Series: Immortals [2]
Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Alternate Universe - The Old Guard (Movie 2020) Fusion, Blood and Gore, Body Horror, Consensual Violence, Immortals, Knife Play, M/M, POV Alternating, Poisoning, Temporary Character Death, but also it's supposed to be romantic so idk, idk how else to warn you, it's literally a fic about harry cutting out voldemort's heart
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-24
Updated: 2020-08-24
Packaged: 2021-03-06 20:15:50
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,526
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26074774
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/asterisms/pseuds/asterismal
Summary: Centuries ago, Harry cut Voldemort’s heart from his chest.These days, he keeps it in a jar.
Relationships: Harry Potter/Tom Riddle, Harry Potter/Voldemort
Series: Immortals [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1889719
Comments: 35
Kudos: 509





	keepsakes

**Author's Note:**

> Before we begin, please note that only the bare minimum of attempts at any sort of historical or medical accuracy were made, so please suspend your disbelief. Also, wrt Voldemort’s name and the fact that Old French wasn’t even a thing yet, I’m gonna point to Latin and call it a day because that's not really the point of the fic, you know?
> 
>   
> **Warning:** as stated in the tags, this is a fic about harry cutting out voldemort's heart. It's consensual and also they're immortal, but still. Let me know if you think anything else needs to be tagged.

They find it in a safe house in Greece.

They have nothing else to do, and Harry had given them free rein of the house before leaving to do who knows what, so they’ve decided to spend the afternoon exploring its many rooms.

“Hermione!" Ron’s voice calls from the room across the hall, and the urgency in it is enough to make her hurry to his side, reluctant as she is to abandon the collection of rare manuscripts she’s just found.

“What is it?” she asks.

Ron turns to look at her. He’s pale. His eyes are wide. “Is that what I think it is?” he asks, pointing toward the open cabinet. She moves closer, peering around his shoulder.

“Oh, gross,” she says, immediately nudging him aside to get a better look.

At first glance, there’s nothing special about the jar tucked away at the back of the shelf. Upon closer inspection, it’s impossible to miss the preserved heart that’s suspended in clear fluid.

It looks human.

She reaches out to grab the jar, but Ron stops her with a hand around her wrist before she can. “What are you doing?” he demands, his voice pitching higher in distress.

“I want to see it.”

“But…” He looks around, as if he thinks Harry might leap out of the walls and scold them for looking. “But what if it’s private?”

She stares back at him, eyebrows raised, and he sheepishly takes his hand away.

Carefully, she grabs the jar. After carrying it to the table in the center of the room, she sets it down with a dull thunk. In the light, she sees that it is, in fact, a human heart. “Where do you think he got it from?” she asks, bending down to look closer.

Ron looks squeamish, which is ridiculous, Hermione thinks, seeing as they’ve both died multiple times by this point. Harry hasn’t asked them to join him on any of his jobs—not yet, anyway—but it’s not like he’s coddled them. A single heart sealed in a jar should hardly be this much of a shock.

“Well, I don’t know, Hermione,” Ron says, “where do hearts _usually_ come from?”

Hermione stands up straight, gaping at him. “You think he killed someone?”

Ron gives her a _look_. “He just told us that he spent centuries as an assassin, and that he’s started picking up jobs again. Of course he’s killed—”

“No, I mean.” She stops, wringing her hands and tugging at her fingers. “You think he killed”—she points to the jar _—“that_ someone?”

Ron presses his lips together, his brows furrowed. “Maybe.”

“Do you think he does it often, then? Keep trophies like this?”

“I don’t know,” Ron says, looking as though he’d rather be thinking about literally anything else.

Hermione bites at her lip, then nods to herself. “We should ask him,” she says, because she knows she’ll drive herself mad with wondering if they don’t.

“Ask me what?”

Hermione flinches so hard she bumps against the table, whirling to face the door as she slaps a hand to her chest. She feels like her heart is trying to crawl up her throat, but when she sees it’s just Harry standing in the doorway, she does her best to relax. “Harry!” she says with a strained smile, feeling short for breath. Her cheeks heat, and she clears her throat. “Is something wrong?”

“I came to see what you two wanted for dinner,” Harry says, giving them an odd look. He shoves away from where he was leaning against the doorjamb. “You said you wanted to ask me something?”

Hermione lets out a nervous laugh.

“We found something,” Ron explains, and he sounds far calmer than she feels. “We wanted to ask you about it.”

“Oh?” Harry looks around the room with interest.

Hermione exchanges a look with Ron, and then they step apart, letting Harry see what’s on the table behind them. She doesn’t know what she expects from him, but the looks of surprise—which rapidly fades to something soft, almost fond—isn’t it.

“I see,” he says.

He approaches the table slowly, and Hermione watches with interest as he trails on finger through the coat of dust that covers it. He lifts it gently, cradling it with one arm as he traces the shape of the heart through the glass, and she can’t decide whether she finds the whole thing creepy or sweet.

“So, uh…” Ron rubs the back of his head as he looks at anything but Harry. “Do you make a habit of it, then?”

“Hmm?” Harry asks, clearly distracted.

“Y’know. Of collecting hearts?”

“Oh! Um, no.” Harry gets an odd look on his face. “No, it’s just the one.”

Ron doesn’t look very reassured. “Right.”

“Is something wrong?” Harry asks.

Hermione decides to step in, then. Because it’s clear to her they aren’t getting anywhere. “We thought maybe you were a serial killer,” she blurts, only to close her eyes and resist the urge to pinch the bridge of her nose when she realizes what she’s just said.

Way to go, tact, she thinks bitterly.

Thankfully—or perhaps not—Harry only laughs. “A serial killer? Really?”

“Well, I don’t know!” she exclaims, throwing her hands in the air.

Ron hurries to back her up. “It’s a valid question,” he says, “seeing as you’ve got a fucking heart in a jar like some messed up trophy!”

Harry stares, taken aback. Then he laughs again, softer this time. “Yeah, okay,” he says, “you’ve got a point. But it really is just the one.”

It sort of makes it better, Hermione thinks, but not really.

“So, uh.” Hermione exchanges another wary look with Ron. _“Why_ do you have it?”

Harry opens his mouth to explain, then he hesitates. “Well,” he says eventually, thinking carefully, “you see, it’s… It’s a reminder.”

A reminder?

“Of what?” Hermione asks, but she can see by the look on Harry’s face that she won’t get an answer.

“You gonna tell us who you got it from?” Ron asks.

Harry looks at them, then, like he’s seeing them from far away, and Hermione is struck once again by the fact that for all that she feels ancient some days—three hundred years of living will do that to a person—Harry has lived _thousands._ He shakes his head, and she lets out the breath she’s been holding. “I don’t think I will,” he says, thoughtful. “Not today.”

“But, someday?” she asks.

And Harry smiles. “Yeah,” he says, “someday.”

"Well," Harry says to himself as he listens to Ron and Hermione's footsteps disappear down the hall, “That could’ve gone better.” It could have gone worse, of course, and yet… He looks down at the jar, taps his fingers against the glass. “I’m sure _you’d_ get a kick out of this,” he says, fond.

Then he catches himself and scowls.

He’s still angry, after all. There’s a reason he tucked this stupid jar into the darkest (and yet, still the safest) corner he could find. Which is why he strides back to the closet and returns the jar to its shelf, pushing it as far back as it can go.

Of course, he can’t really remember that reason, not anymore.

But he’s certain he had one. At some point.

It was probably a good one.

He makes it all the way to the doorway before he stops. Sighing at himself, he returns to the closet, taking the jar back and holding it to his chest. “I used to be better at this,” he says to it. “It’s just…it’s hard to be angry when you’re not here to be insufferable.”

He traces the shape of a heart in the dust that still covers most of the glass.

By all the gods, he really has gone soft.

Voldemort (if that’s still the name he uses now, and why does the uncertainty _ache_ so much?) would surely laugh at him if he knew. So it’s a good thing, Harry tells himself, that he isn’t around to know.

He was the one who left—who left _violently._

He doesn’t get to regret it now.

Still, when he retreats to his room later that night, finally giving in to the dreams of his lover (half a world away and searching, always searching), the jar has pride of place on his bedside table.

– – –

**398 CE**

By the time he finds his love again, he’s earned another name.

Voldemort, they call him.

At first, he pays it no mind, because what does he care for the names these mortals—these inconsequential creatures—give him? Then he sees the fear that follows in its wake, and he changes his mind. He finds he quite likes it.

The translation is less than perfect, but he cannot find fault in the effect—flight of death.

It’s fitting, then, he thinks, that the first time he sees Harry since he left, they face each other from opposite sides of a battlefield. The moment Voldemort sees his love, he knows; he will kill anyone who stands between them, and then he will kill _him._ Seventy-five years ago, Harry left him with a knife buried in his gut and cursed fire at his heels. He doesn’t remember why, because there have been so many fights and so many reasons in all their years together, but he remembers the look in his eyes.

He remembers how it felt to watch him walk away.

In battle, he kills his love three times—twice for the pain, once for the thrill of it.

He’s certain he’ll pay for it later, but he can’t bring himself to feel regret. There’s nothing in this world like the sight of Harry’s blood as it spills through the air, like the sound of his last, hitching breath before each end.

After, Harry finds him.

He approaches Voldemort’s solitary camp like a ghost, a half-shadow creature on silent feet. For hours, Voldemort feared he wouldn’t come.

But he does.

“You’ve done well for yourself,” Harry says, and Voldemort starts, nearly sending the sword lying across his lap tumbling into the fire. He looks and sees Harry at the clearing’s edge. He wonders how long he’s been watching. “Of course, now that you’ve been witnessed killing dozens of your own men just to reach me, I’d imagine your career is over.”

Voldemort only smiles. “Hello, my love,” he says.

“Really?” Harry drops his pack to the ground, crosses his arms over his chest. “That’s all you have to say to me?”

He looks like he washed after the battle, but he missed a spot. There’s a smear of blood across his temple.

“I’ve missed you,” Voldemort says, because it’s true. Because he deserves to hear it said aloud.

Harry looks unimpressed.

“You’re the worst,” he says, but at last he relaxes his stance, and Voldemort feels a matching tension between his shoulders uncoil. Harry drops to sit on the ground, close enough to reach out and touch. “Three times? Really?”

He forces his expression solemn, presses a hand over his heart. “I was very hurt when you left me.”

His darling only scoffs at him. “Right,” he mutters before turning to rustle through his pack. When he finds what he’s looking for, he throws it. Voldemort catches the bottle just before it hits him in the face, and he sneers, only to falter when he catches a whiff of what’s inside.

“Is this…?”

Harry grins. “You’re welcome.”

Of all the intoxicants he’s been exposed to in his long life, wine remains his favorite. They used to do this all the time together; once the grime of battle was washed away, they’d find a quiet place, far enough away that the smell of death no longer hung in the air, and unwind together.

He’s missed it.

He pull the stopper, sniffs it with an appreciative hum. When he notices Harry staring, he holds the bottle out to him, offering the first taste. But Harry only smiles and says, “I was thinking of you when I bought it. It’s only right that you should drink first.”

And so he does.

Perhaps his darling is less upset about his deaths than he predicted.

“It’s sweet,” he says, pleased, licking his lips to collect any stray drops. Though he denies it viciously whenever Harry sees fit to tease him, he’s always had a sweet tooth. Reluctantly, he offers the bottle again, but Harry only waves him on. “You’re missing out.”

“I’ll catch up.”

He shrugs. “Suit yourself.”

The first sign that something is wrong, he almost writes off as an effect of the alcohol. Almost. His limbs feel heavy, heavier than they should; everything is slow. The world begins to tilt, and he plants one hand in the dirt lest he fall with it.

His mouth is dry; it’s too hot.

“Is everything alright?” he hears Harry ask, only… He doesn’t sound concerned.

He opens his eyes, wondering when he closed them. His head hurts, he realizes.

Why does his head hurt?

He only notices he’s clutching at his stomach—which also hurts, why does it _hurt?—_ when he feels Harry’s hands around his wrists. “It’s okay, Vee,” Harry says.

He tries to say something, anything, but Harry shushes him. He lifts a tender hand to his cheek, rubs the sweat from his brow.

“Lie down,” his darling says, and he thinks he does.

The last thing he sees is Harry looking down at him, and in the moments before his vision goes, he thinks his love is glowing.

Harry works quickly as his lover dies.

He strips him of the last of his armor. He binds him. While he knows no rope could ever hold him for long, he hopes the novelty of it will be enough to keep him from freeing himself too quickly. He reaches for his knife, because he knows this is unlikely—Voldemort has never done well with being caught off guard.

By the time Voldemort begins to stir, he’s ready—knife in hand as he straddles his lover’s hips.

“What the _hell_ was that?” Voldemort demands, snarling, as soon as he can speak. His are eyes wild as he strains against the rope, looking like he’d gladly tear a chunk out of Harry with his teeth.

Harry grins down at him. “You didn’t like it?”

Voldemort bucks beneath him, almost gets one hand free. “You dare—” is all he says before he begins speaking in a language Harry doesn’t understand. Until, “I’ll _kill you,_ you—”

Harry slits his throat.

He comes back with a gasp.

“Are you done?” Harry asks before he can begin again.

For a long moment, Voldemort lies still beneath him. Then he says, much calmer than before, “I suppose I deserved that.”

Harry snorts. “By my count,” he says, tapping the blade’s point against his lover’s exposed collar bone, “you deserve at least one more.”

Voldemort stares up at him with narrowed eyes. “Untie me,” he commands.

Harry hums in thought, considering. He applies the slightest of pressure, turning the blade until it digs in but doesn’t break skin. “I don’t think I will.”

“Harry,” Voldemort warns.

Harry only smiles. “Don’t you trust me?”

“You poisoned me,” his lover says stiffly. He shifts, and Harry adjusts to keep him pinned. Thwarted, Voldemort glares and adds, “You slit my throat.”

“Is that a no?”

Voldemort heaves a long-suffering sigh. Considering Harry felt his neck snap under his lover’s boot earlier today—and that was the least gruesome of the three—he’s not feeling very sympathetic.

“I grow tired of this,” Voldemort says eventually.

“That’s a shame,” Harry says, grinning. He leans down, closer, and the added pressure is just enough that the knife slips, nicking Voldemort’s chest. It heals within seconds, and the pain is surely mild, but it’s there. Voldemort’s lips part on a gasp, and Harry sees the beginning of something like interest in his expression. “I could go for hours.”

“What are you suggesting?” his lover asks.

“I think you know what I’m suggesting.”

“Well, do excuse me if I seem surprised,” Voldemort says. He shifts again, this time to get comfortable. Harry allows it. “You’ve never seemed the type to enjoy inflicting pain.”

Harry shrugs. “In general, I don’t think I am.”

Voldemort’s eyes widen. “Oh.”

“Yeah,” Harry says with a smirk. _“Oh.”_

He can almost see the thoughts whirling about his lover’s mind before he asks, slowly, “What brought this on?”

“I had some time to myself, all these years apart,” Harry begins. His lover moves beneath him, and Harry cuts him again. He stares, feels strangely lightheaded as he watches a small bead of blood disappear beneath his tunic. He says, “I found myself thinking…the strangest things.”

Voldemort’s tongue wets his lips. “Go on.”

“Things like…” He trails off, staring down at the blood he’s left on Voldemort’s chest. It was a small thing, really, barely a cut at all. He finds he wants to leave a bigger one. He uses his knife to cut through Voldemort’s tunic. The fabric slides easily from his chest to the dirt when he pushes it aside. “What do you think would happen…”

Voldemort swallows, flexing against his bonds again. “I’m afraid you’ll need to be more specific.”

Harry grins.

He touches the blade to Voldemort’s newly bared skin, feels almost dizzy with the power of it. He knows, of course, that Voldemort could escape if he wanted to. But he doesn’t want to. He presses down, drags the knife in a straight, shallow line across his lover’s chest.

Blood wells from the cut. His mouth feels dry, suddenly.

“What do you think would happen,” he begins again, making another cut as the first begins to heal, gouging deeper this time, “if I cut the heart from your chest?”

“I imagine I would die,” Voldemort tells him, his voice strained.

“Do you think you’d grow a new one?” Harry asks as though he hasn’t spoken. He imagines what it would feel like, to hold his lover’s still warm heart in his palm, wet and heavy with blood. “Or would I have to put it back?”

Voldemort’s breaths are coming shallow now.

His pupils are blown wide.

He says, fervent, so sincere it knocks the breath from his lungs and puts a sting in his eyes, “I _worship_ you.” And it’s almost enough to make Harry pause, to make him end this just to get Voldemort’s arms around him, until—Voldemort frees his hands, clutches Harry’s face between them as he says, “Let’s find out.”

And suddenly he wants nothing more.

He shifts his grip on his knife, and Voldemort’s hands fall from his face to hook behind his thighs, pulling him closer. His grip is bruising, and Harry has wished before that he didn’t heal so quickly, but never like this.

He wants this moment tattooed beneath his skin forever.

He forces himself to keep breathing, closing his eyes because he can’t bear the look on Voldemort’s face. A hand touches his face again. “Open your eyes, my love,” Voldemort says, and Harry does. He rubs his thumb across Harry’s cheek. “It’s alright.”

“I know,” he says, and it hits him then, what he’s about to do. “I know, it’s just—”

“Tell me.”

“It’s so much.”

And Voldemort smiles. “It is.”

He doesn’t offer a way out. He doesn’t say they can stop, and Harry finds he’s grateful for it. He takes a deep, grounding breath and lets it out slowly. He feels as though the whole world beyond them has ceased to exist, like they’re the only living things left. He wonders if Voldemort feels the same.

He shifts his weight, plants one hand on Voldemort’s chest as he lifts his knife.

As he touches cold metal to his lover’s chest, he steals a kiss that leaves him breathless. The first cut isn’t deep enough, he knows as soon as he starts; it begins healing before he’s even finished making it.

He looks down at his lover’s body.

He adjusts his grip. He tries again. This time, he digs in, puts his weight into it because he has to as he presses his knees into the dirt for leverage. The knife sinks deeper, and Voldemort moans, his hands like talons as he clutches at the meat of Harry’s thighs. A body isn’t meant to be split open this way, and it fights him.

When he hits bone, he jerks his knife free.

He digs his fingers into the wound—his lover’s body is slick and hot and so unbearably _alive_ beneath his hands—and forces it wider. Voldemort hisses, wraps one arm around his neck to drag him closer and bite at his mouth.

As Voldemort kisses him, blood spills hot against his palms, and the scent of it is so thick he can taste it. It’s familiar and entirely new all at once. Breathing through it as best he can, he takes up his knife again. He can’t cut through bone, he knows, but he can break it.

When the first rib breaks, Voldemort shouts. His torso spasms, lifts from the ground, before he collapses flat on his back again, panting, his face screwed up in pain or pleasure—he can’t tell. Perhaps it’s both.

He hopes it’s both.

As he works—this terrible, messy, _perfect_ work—he can see Voldemort’s body healing. He can feel it. He works faster. Ribs crack in his hands, and he feels lightheaded. He feels like he’s going to be sick.

He feels powerful.

There’s a weight to this that he didn’t expect. He’s killed his lover before, over and over and over again, but not like this. Piece by blessed piece, he pries his lover open, and with each break, with each ripping tear, he feels less and less like himself. He feels like something ancient, something wild.

He thinks he’ll never feel this way again.

He thinks this is probably a good thing.

Voldemort dies before he reaches his heart. It isn’t a surprise. In some ways, this makes it easier. When a wound is big enough, the healing is slow, and this wound is finally _—finally—_ big enough.

And yet.

He wishes his lover was here with him.

In the end, when he cuts Voldemort’s heart free, it’s easy. He takes it in one hand, lifts it carefully from its place. It feels so big in his hands, he thinks, strong and hot to the touch. He thought it’d be heavier. He stares at it so long that he misses the start of his lover’s healing. By the time he looks away from it, he sees a new heart blooming in the cavity he made.

The healing is beautiful, in an awful sort of way. It’s slow, and it’s loud.

He doesn’t look away; he can’t.

Voldemort opens his eyes as his ribs crack into place. He breathes slowly, like it hurts, and it probably does. His gaze lands on Harry. “Well?” he asks, voice hoarse.

Harry finds he can’t speak.

His hands shake as he lifts Voldemort’s heart—his _heart,_ and it’s absurd and awful and staggering all at once—and it’s firm in his hand, but he could crush it so easily if he wanted to. But he doesn’t want to. He holds it up for Voldemort to see.

For a long time, Voldemort only stares.

Then he sits up, a rush of movement that catches Harry off-guard before his lover’s hands are on his face, pulling him closer. He crushes their lips together, kissing him so violently it hurts, and it tastes like blood. He thinks he should mind it more than he does.

When Voldemort bites his lip, Harry gasps, and his lover presses closer, licks into his mouth as he holds Harry’s head in place. His fingers dig into Harry’s face, his nails gouging at his skin, and the bright pain of it sends him higher.

He can’t breathe.

When he’s finally released, he’s left reeling, feeling unmoored but for the weight of his lover’s heart in his hands. He licks his lips, and the taste of iron on his tongue is grounding too.

Voldemort’s mouth is red; there’s a smear of blood up his cheek.

It’s this, more than anything, that brings him back. He swallows the blood in his mouth and feels sick with it—feels pleasure, too. He says, voice steady for all that he feels like he could shake apart, “You grew another one.”

Voldemort stares, and then he grins. There’s blood on his teeth.

“I adore you,” he says, like it’s nothing special, like it’s just another truth, and then he uses the hand that’s still on Harry’s face to smear the blood from his lips up his cheek.

Harry laughs, breathless and giddy and so in love he could burst. He feels as though he’s run a marathon; he feels like he could run another. He says, grinning, “I know.”

Voldemort knocks their foreheads together, and Harry leans into the touch.

When they part, Voldemort looks down, and Harry does too. He wonders how Voldemort can stand it, seeing this piece of himself in someone else’s hands, knowing that it’s beyond him now and always will be. He lifts the heart for Voldemort to take.

But he doesn’t.

Instead, Voldemort’s hands are firm as he cradles Harry’s hands in his and lowers them slowly to his lap. He takes his hands away. “But it’s yours,” Harry says.

“And you took it,” Voldemort tells him. _And now it’s yours,_ he doesn’t say, because he doesn’t need to. He shrugs, like it doesn’t matter, but his dark eyes watch Harry carefully. “Do with it what you will.”

And Harry is struck, suddenly, by the weight of it all—by the weight of what he’s taken, of what he’s been given.

His lover’s heart is heavy in his hands, but it feels so fragile.

Under Voldemort’s watchful eye, he lifts it carefully. He presses it to his lips, breathes in, and when Voldemort makes a sound like he's hurt at the sight, he decides. It’s his because he took it. He could only take it because it already was.

He’ll keep it for as long as he lives.

– – –

(Later—three decades after they visit the safe house for the first time—they return to it.

To get to the library from the first floor, they have to walk past the door to Harry’s room. One day, as Hermione is on her way to meet Ron for a game of chess, the door is open. She sees movement out of the corner of her eye as she passes; she stops, and she looks.

She sees Voldemort.

He’s alone, on his knees beside Harry’s bed. As she watches, he lifts one trembling hand to the jar that sits on the bedside table.

And she doesn’t know what it means, not really.

But as she lifts her own hand, presses it to her chest over her heart and thinks of Ron, waiting for her just down the hall, she thinks she can guess.)

**Author's Note:**

> now that's what i call Romance
> 
> Thanks for reading :)) you can find me on tumblr at [being-luminous](https://being-luminous.tumblr.com/)


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